Bose® CineMate® Digital Home Theater Speaker System

I recently helped a neighbor install a Cinemate II system. There is a supplied (but minimal) remote control for turning it on/off, volume, mute. The idea was to turn off the internal speakers in the TV and simply leave the Cinemate on all the time and just turn on the TV - basically a one button operation.. However what they don't tell you in the manual is that after a certain period of time (I think 30 minutes) with no sound the unit turns off automatically. Now my neighbor has to turn the Cinemate back on each time she turns on the TV the next day. Called Bose and they confirmed this so called "feature" and said the solution to a one-button-turns-on-both operation is to buy their universal remote for another $30.00.

Bose® CineMate® Digital Home Theater Speaker System
Very satisfied. Delivers all the theatrical sound you need to feel like you are in a real theatre. Surround sound out of just 3 speakers beats the clutter anytime!

I have this Bose system and it works great. I love the sound for movies and music. A+

I initially walked into Best Buy and fell in love with the Bose 321 system. But it is definately not worth the $1,000 price tag. So I figured I would buy the Cinemate speakers for under $400, connect it to my Samsung plasma, and use my Playstation 3 as a blu-ray player instead.

Setup was quite simple; just follow along with the dvd and you'll be fine. This system is great for my purposes. My living room is not very large and I did not have the need for a 5.1 speaker system. So a 2.1 system is just what the doctor ordered. The sound quality and clarity rocks when you turn it up loud... otherwise, it's not very special. All in all, if you would rather not bother with running wires across your room and you want good sound quality from a premier brand then this is the system for you.

Before investing money on this product I read almost all the reviews out there. Most of them said good things but some were displeased. In the end I thought that the people who gave this product a bad review might have been expecting bit too much out of it and because it is a bose it must be good. I connected this system to my Samsung LED TV audio out. It is a fixed output so you cannot do anything with the audio signal that TV was sending to speakers. My initial impression of this product, I've made a big mistake. Bass was very low and the system was not at all tuned to my liking (I don't like lot of bass or treble). Because I've invested so much money on this I keep on trying to convince myself that this is good.

For movies I'm pretty happy with this. At one or two times virtual surround also worked pretty good. I think this would have been a good system (as it has good solid speakers) If somehow I could have manipulate the audio signals coming out from my TV. The Universal remote is a crap. It works perfactly with my comcast settop box (which I hardly use) but misses few key functionality for my Samsung TV and B-ray player (like pause and A, B, C, D buttons).

Bottom Line. If you can customize the audio out of your TV, then you can give this a try, otherwise dont even think of wasting money on this product.